Thursday, September 14, 2006
Steve Continues to Harp on Things about which Very Few People Care
Huh.
A few things that leap out of me:
1. Three of the four so-called frontrunners (I still think Dryden's got the same chance as Kennedy of winning this thing; i.e. not much) - Ignatieff, Rae, and Kennedy - poll relatively much better among people who already support the Liberals than among the general public. Meaning, of course, that they're quite good as appealing to the people who are already planning on voting Liberal, but aren't quite so beloved among voters who aren't (such voters being otherwise known as "voters to whom the Liberals need to appeal in order to form government"). Gee, who's the fourth so-called frontrunner, again?
2. I don't want to be too glib about this: Stéphane Dion's polling numbers are disappointingly low and, even once the discrepancy between Liberal-supporters and non-Liberal-supporters is taken into account, he looks much less electable than either Ignatieff or Rae. However, it is interesting (and, to me, not at all surprising) that his electability both in Québec and among francophones nation-wide is by far the highest - and this from a man who's supposedly a pariah in his home province. Instead, the millstone around his neck is the fact that the rest of Canada doesn't seem to want another Prime Minister from Québec, a phenomenon that increases as you move west until you get past Alberta.
3. This has nothing to do with the polling data, but I find it interesting just how perverted many English Canadians' expectations of bilingualism are. Stéphane Dion is approximately as bilingual as either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff - that is to say, his English is about as good as their French. He's substantially more bilingual than Stephen Harper (who's French is, in my opinion, entirely satisfactory for a Canadian Prime Minister). However, Dion's English is repeatedly cited as a concern among English Canadians who believe it's important for a Prime Minister to be bilingual. These are some of the same English Canadians who a few years back were touting the likes of Rahim Jaffer and Stockwell Day as being satisfactorily bilingual (I trust we all remember Day's performance on the national French-language debates. As far as Jaffer goes, I once witnessed him at a supposedly French language election forum at the Faculté Saint-Jean: he'd switched to English by the end.) Stephen Harper's the least bilingual Prime Minister since Lester Pearson, but English Canadians seem very much willing to thrust a Prime Minister on French Canada whose French is much weaker than the minimum English they would accept from a francophone Prime Minister.
Enough of that. Back to the polling.
4. I called Gerard Kennedy overrated a few posts ago, and some pro-Kennedy-blogger who had some piece of technology set up to notify him anytime a blogger mentioned Kennedy took me to task in the comments section. These data show part of what I meant. I remain convinced that most Kennedy supporters are in that camp because they want a clean break from anybody previously-involved with the federal Liberals and find Ignatieff either too right-wing or too bandwagon-y for their tastes (Rae, of course, has at least as much baggage as any Liberal MP in the race with the possible exception of Hedy Fry). At least, I assume that's the reason Kennedy's so popular in certain circles - I can't think of an alternate explanation.
5. Lest this whole post turn into an exercise in I-told-you-so-or-at-least-I-would-have-if-I'd-gotten-around-to-it, I was flabbergasted by the Dryden numbers, but not displeased. I like Ken Dryden, and he's my likely second choice. But these numbers ought to convince a lot of Liberals who are concerned chiefly with electoral success (a breed otherwise known as "all Liberals") to take a second look at the guy, especially as a second choice. The trouble is that the likely combined first-ballot support of everybody who will finish behind him may not be enough to push him into the top three.
6. Back to the English/French thing - apparently, at least 23% of Canadians, including at least 26% of Liberals, would be prepared to accept a unilingual anglophone Prime Minister, but not a unilingual francophone Prime Minister. The sheer number of people prepared to subscribe to this double-standard is shocking, all the more so since it's actually *higher* among supporters of the party that brought in official bilingualism.
7. Back to my fixation on Dion: does anybody else find it surprising that he was, along with Scott Brison, relatively the most popular among voters who placed a high priority on managing the economy? It almost gives the impression that people are buying into his whole "three pillars" thing, which even I think is painfully meaningless.
8. Supporters of Ignatieff and Kennedy are likely to explain their candidates' unexpectedly poor showings by the fact that they're relative newcomers, and therefore lack the name recognition of people who have spent years in the federal cabinet or are Hall of Fame goaltenders. On the face of it, this appears reasonable, especially since both do much better among Liberal supporters, who are presumably more likely to have heard of them. However, Ignatieff has been receiving a blitz of media coverage, and I have trouble believing that the Canadian public remains less familiar with him than with a relatively low-key former cabinet minister like Dion. For Kennedy's part, Ontario, where he ought to be reasonably well-known, is something of a wasteland for him: his combined "definite/likely" Liberal votes in the province put him tied for third, ahead of only Dion among the front-runners and behind supposed also-ran Dryden.
9. The reader is cautioned not to confuse "Liberal voters", who are segmented out in this poll but who have, as a group, no priveleged position in the selection of the next Liberal leader, with "Liberal members", who are not segemented out in this poll but who will be indirectly choosing the next leader.
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Huh.
A few things that leap out of me:
1. Three of the four so-called frontrunners (I still think Dryden's got the same chance as Kennedy of winning this thing; i.e. not much) - Ignatieff, Rae, and Kennedy - poll relatively much better among people who already support the Liberals than among the general public. Meaning, of course, that they're quite good as appealing to the people who are already planning on voting Liberal, but aren't quite so beloved among voters who aren't (such voters being otherwise known as "voters to whom the Liberals need to appeal in order to form government"). Gee, who's the fourth so-called frontrunner, again?
2. I don't want to be too glib about this: Stéphane Dion's polling numbers are disappointingly low and, even once the discrepancy between Liberal-supporters and non-Liberal-supporters is taken into account, he looks much less electable than either Ignatieff or Rae. However, it is interesting (and, to me, not at all surprising) that his electability both in Québec and among francophones nation-wide is by far the highest - and this from a man who's supposedly a pariah in his home province. Instead, the millstone around his neck is the fact that the rest of Canada doesn't seem to want another Prime Minister from Québec, a phenomenon that increases as you move west until you get past Alberta.
3. This has nothing to do with the polling data, but I find it interesting just how perverted many English Canadians' expectations of bilingualism are. Stéphane Dion is approximately as bilingual as either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff - that is to say, his English is about as good as their French. He's substantially more bilingual than Stephen Harper (who's French is, in my opinion, entirely satisfactory for a Canadian Prime Minister). However, Dion's English is repeatedly cited as a concern among English Canadians who believe it's important for a Prime Minister to be bilingual. These are some of the same English Canadians who a few years back were touting the likes of Rahim Jaffer and Stockwell Day as being satisfactorily bilingual (I trust we all remember Day's performance on the national French-language debates. As far as Jaffer goes, I once witnessed him at a supposedly French language election forum at the Faculté Saint-Jean: he'd switched to English by the end.) Stephen Harper's the least bilingual Prime Minister since Lester Pearson, but English Canadians seem very much willing to thrust a Prime Minister on French Canada whose French is much weaker than the minimum English they would accept from a francophone Prime Minister.
Enough of that. Back to the polling.
4. I called Gerard Kennedy overrated a few posts ago, and some pro-Kennedy-blogger who had some piece of technology set up to notify him anytime a blogger mentioned Kennedy took me to task in the comments section. These data show part of what I meant. I remain convinced that most Kennedy supporters are in that camp because they want a clean break from anybody previously-involved with the federal Liberals and find Ignatieff either too right-wing or too bandwagon-y for their tastes (Rae, of course, has at least as much baggage as any Liberal MP in the race with the possible exception of Hedy Fry). At least, I assume that's the reason Kennedy's so popular in certain circles - I can't think of an alternate explanation.
5. Lest this whole post turn into an exercise in I-told-you-so-or-at-least-I-would-have-if-I'd-gotten-around-to-it, I was flabbergasted by the Dryden numbers, but not displeased. I like Ken Dryden, and he's my likely second choice. But these numbers ought to convince a lot of Liberals who are concerned chiefly with electoral success (a breed otherwise known as "all Liberals") to take a second look at the guy, especially as a second choice. The trouble is that the likely combined first-ballot support of everybody who will finish behind him may not be enough to push him into the top three.
6. Back to the English/French thing - apparently, at least 23% of Canadians, including at least 26% of Liberals, would be prepared to accept a unilingual anglophone Prime Minister, but not a unilingual francophone Prime Minister. The sheer number of people prepared to subscribe to this double-standard is shocking, all the more so since it's actually *higher* among supporters of the party that brought in official bilingualism.
7. Back to my fixation on Dion: does anybody else find it surprising that he was, along with Scott Brison, relatively the most popular among voters who placed a high priority on managing the economy? It almost gives the impression that people are buying into his whole "three pillars" thing, which even I think is painfully meaningless.
8. Supporters of Ignatieff and Kennedy are likely to explain their candidates' unexpectedly poor showings by the fact that they're relative newcomers, and therefore lack the name recognition of people who have spent years in the federal cabinet or are Hall of Fame goaltenders. On the face of it, this appears reasonable, especially since both do much better among Liberal supporters, who are presumably more likely to have heard of them. However, Ignatieff has been receiving a blitz of media coverage, and I have trouble believing that the Canadian public remains less familiar with him than with a relatively low-key former cabinet minister like Dion. For Kennedy's part, Ontario, where he ought to be reasonably well-known, is something of a wasteland for him: his combined "definite/likely" Liberal votes in the province put him tied for third, ahead of only Dion among the front-runners and behind supposed also-ran Dryden.
9. The reader is cautioned not to confuse "Liberal voters", who are segmented out in this poll but who have, as a group, no priveleged position in the selection of the next Liberal leader, with "Liberal members", who are not segemented out in this poll but who will be indirectly choosing the next leader.
